Back at home! And, the best banana bread you’ll ever eat.

I made it safely back from Minnesota after spending a week visiting my family. I had a great time chasing them around all week and trying to keep up with their very busy lives. :-) My family is so awesome. My parents are so kind to me and they go out of their way to make my visits home great! And my siblings, well, they’re my siblings, which means they tease me and ridicule me and tickle me when I’m not expecting it. But it would be kind of weird if they didn’t do that, because that’s what siblings do. They’re also smart and talented and hilarious and fun to be around. I miss them!!

But just the same, it’s good to be home. Falling asleep next to my husband last night after a week apart felt like HEAVEN.

I fully intended to post semi-regularly while I was in Minnesota, but obviously that didn’t happen. I can blame it partially on a lack of a very good internet connection, but the real reason is that I really needed a vacation … so I took one. :-)

I think I’ll post some silly pictures from my trip for you tomorrow. The internet is a bit on the slow side today, so I have a recipe instead. Trust me though, it’s a good one.

I’ve been making this banana bread ever since I was a kid and the recipe was in a children’s cookbook I think my grandma gave me. The book had a recipe for each letter of the alphabet, and this was the one (duh!) for the letter “B.” A lot of the other recipes in that book were not so good (which I guess is what happens when you try to come up with recipes that start with “X” or “Z” – hah!). This recipe, however, is killer — as well as easy — and I have never tasted better banana bread. Never ever. It’s very banana-y, which I love. And MOIST! Oh my GOODness is it MOIST! (I think moist is a weird word … but it is the best way to describe this bread.)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In a bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, oil, vanilla, and mashed bananas. In another bowl combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Mix wet and dry ingredients together. Add nuts if using. Pour into a greased loaf pan. Bake 60 to 70 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of loaf comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then loosen sides of loaf from pan and remove from pan. Finish cooling on a wire rack. Once cool, slice and enjoy! You can also freeze it to eat later.

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One of the best things about banana bread is that you can eat it pretty much any time of the day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, afternoon tea/coffee … hey even the occasional midnight snack. (Although if this bread were sitting around in my house, my midnight snacks would likely become more than “occasional.”)

Hope you try it! Just writing about it is making me wish I had some overripe bananas lying around so I could make some for this weekend. Can you believe tomorrow is Friday already?!

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my home on the web. I blog from my small but cozy apartment in Virginia Beach, VA where I live with my husband, Ben. Here you'll find a little bit of everything from my home - thoughts, recipes, funny stories, design inspiration, and the occasional knock-knock joke. Make yourself at home...